Part 9 (2/2)

He was lying on his side facing the door, angled diagonally across the bed, and he didn't even twitch when she pulled back the sheet, baring his upper body. She didn't let herself gasp-at least she didn't think she did. The only thing she knew for sure was that she was staring at an acre or two of smooth golden skin stretched over a relief map of muscle and bone.

He. Was. Magnificent.

His face was fierce even in sleep, lines drawn between his brows as though he glared through closed eyelids. His mouth was a flat line, his jaw an aggressive jut below the long, hooked nose, wide-set eyes, and high cheekbones. Before, his lashes had been thick and full; now his eyelids were bare, turning him into something strange and primal. Back in the day, she had a.s.sumed he had started shaving his head to look tougher, and it had worked. Now, she wondered whether it had been a sign of his magic waking up, an impulse he hadn't fully understood at the time.

She touched his shoulder, intending to shake him, but then just let her fingers rest there. His skin was warm satin, his muscles living stone that poured across his wide shoulders and rippled down his abdomen to disappear beneath the sheet, temping her to picture the rest of him, muscle-etched, golden, and entirely smooth to the touch.

Reese, who waxed herself ruthlessly bare, felt a little envious . . . and a whole lot turned on, her insides gone molten, her skin dampening from more than the room's near-tropical heat, and-And you're stoned, she thought on a slow-moving churn of logic. Or high, or something. The antidote had put her in a major state. Her heart thudded and desire raced through her veins, making the past and future seem so much less important than that precise moment in time, and the way her skin looked against his as she touched him, stroking his shoulder, his arm, then trailing down to- Bad idea. She pulled back, inhaling a shuddering breath that did nothing to calm the churn of heat and nerves. She should leave the syrup and go, get out while she could, clear her head. He could drink the d.a.m.n stuff when he finally woke up. Except that Lucius didn't know how long that would take; Keban was out there on the loose; another village had disappeared; the meteor shower was two days away, the solstice ten . . . and the Nightkeepers needed her help to get their Triad mage back and make sure he didn't have a hidden agenda.

The heat amped a notch at the realization that she might be in over her head, out of her league, but she was doing something, d.a.m.n it. She wasn't just making phone calls and tracking down last knowns. The realization, like the leather jacket back in her room, made her feel more alive than she had since she stopped nabbing bail jumpers. Back then, she had been saving her own piece of the world; now she had a chance to help save the whole d.a.m.n thing. The blood beat beneath her skin with a mix of nerves and euphoria, a c.o.c.ktail she had once needed like a drug.

Warning signals went off in her brain, but they were drowned out by the knowledge that she was doing the right thing here. And that for a change-maybe for the first time ever-she had the ability to fix what ailed big, bada.s.s Snake Mendez.

”Okay, slick.” She stopped stroking him, shook him instead. ”Time to wake up.”

No response. He was out cold.

After a couple of more tries, she hitched a hip onto the bed. Ignoring the way the room spun around her just as much as she was ignoring the little voice inside her that said this was a really bad idea, she leaned over him, touched a fingertip to the thick syrup, and stroked it onto his tongue. Then she rubbed his throat, which rippled beneath her touch-smoothly, sinuously-as he licked his lips.

She stared at his mouth, transfixed. His heat surrounded her, making her skin p.r.i.c.kle, and she suddenly felt like a voyeur in her own body, watching her hands and his mouth as she repeated the process a second time. And a third. The fourth time, he swallowed on his own, and she thought he might have been breathing a little faster than before. She definitely was. The room wasn't spinning anymore; it was throbbing. And she was in serious trouble. In some corner of her mind, two words whispered: s.e.x magic.

She had read up on it back at Skywatch, had felt the way the air s.h.i.+fted around the mated couples when they shared a look, a touch. And now she felt it in the way the air vibrated, the fine tingles that ran along her skin, and how suddenly nothing mattered more than touching him. She wanted to run her hands over him, wanted him inside her with a ferociousness that couldn't be anything but a magic-driven compulsion.

She told herself to leave.

She leaned closer instead.

”Dez.” When her voice cracked, she swallowed and tried again. ”Dez, can you hear me?”

He groaned and s.h.i.+fted, rolling partway onto his back, closer to the center of the wide mattress. His thick erection was the center pole of an impressive tent; it drew her eyes, made her want to touch, taste. There was no thought process anymore, no real logic, only the magnetism that drew her onward, made her keep going. She got onto the mattress and knelt beside him, dipped two fingers into the syrup, and touched his lips. When he opened for her, the breath went thin in her lungs, and when he suckled, a hot wash of pleasure suffused her, leaving her tingling and wanting more.

Dimly, she was aware that she was doing exactly what she had sworn not to do, but she didn't care. She was a freelancer, an independent who didn't answer to anybody.

”Dez?” This time his name was little more than a whisper.

Finally, he opened his eyes, which were pale and luminous. ”Reese.” The word was a low rumble that seemed to come from the depths of the sensual storm raging inside her. ”You're really here.”

Relief had her smile going crooked. ”Yeah. I'm here.”

He searched her face. ”Is it now or then?”

Not sure how to answer that, she eased over him, pressed the cup to his lower lip. ”Drink this. It'll help bring you back the rest of the way.”

He drank and she stared, transfixed by the rhythmic working of his jaw and throat, the bunch and flow of the muscles in his arm when he steadied the cup, the striking contrast of the black glyphs and dark blue-green cuffs against his smooth, golden skin. Then the cup was gone, thudding on the rug as he let it fall so he could wrap his hand around her neck and draw her closer.

His eyes were locked on hers, his expression open and heartbreakingly vulnerable. But instead of speaking, he closed the last breath of distance between them. And kissed her.

Oh, G.o.d. He kissed her.

He tasted of the syrup, rich and intoxicating. His lips were firm, sleek, and devastating as they moved over hers, his tongue a fascinating slide of heat and texture. His body felt like sin incarnate, all hard muscles and that smooth, warm skin sliding against her as he curled an arm around her and caught her up against his body. His very naked, very aroused body. The kiss was deep and carnal, a full-on press of lips and tongue, heat and madness. The sensations blanked out everything but the taste and feel of him, the rippling shocks unleashed by the press of his lips and the slide of his tongue.

She didn't trust his motives, didn't trust him. But she wanted him more than she wanted her next breath.

Run! said the practical, straitlaced, boring Reese Montana who had spent the past year wearing matchy-matchy suits and finding people for clients who probably could have managed the job with twenty bucks and a couple of Google searches. But the other side of her, the side that had just spent a month's rent on black leather, knew d.a.m.n well they were both drunk and didn't give a s.h.i.+t, so she stayed put.

And kissed him back.

Dez was entirely aware that he wasn't dreaming anymore. He was really holding now-Reese, really kissing her and sliding a hand beneath her s.h.i.+rt to find the warm curve of a breast, the peak of a nipple. All that was happening in the here and now, in a hotel room somewhere in northern New Mex. But the dream stayed with him, sending s.e.x magic to race through his body and charge the air around them.

The dream and the magic bore the touch of the G.o.ds; the woman in his arms felt like an angel and tasted like a prayer. She filled the emptiness inside him, the hollow ache of having been alone for so long. She wasn't the woman he'd dreamed of, the one he'd never hurt or betrayed. Yet somehow she was that woman-she had come after him and fought at his side, and now was right there in his bed, trying to heal him, to fix him.

Tightening his arms around her, he deepened the kiss, trying to tell her what that meant to him when he wasn't really sure himself. Logic said that if he truly cared for her he would turn her loose. Because if he couldn't take out Keban and the artifacts before the solstice, he would have to deal with the prophecy he'd spent half a lifetime running away from. Desire, though, didn't give a s.h.i.+t about logic when lightning raced in his veins and a woman-the woman, the only one there had ever been for him-arched in his arms, pressing against him and kissing him back with wild abandon. A decade ago, he had been able to make himself stay away from her until the time was right, only it never had been. Now, he didn't give a s.h.i.+t about the timing or whether it was right or wrong. He wanted her, here and now.

His honor was gone, his self-control out the window. She filled up the emptiness, sharpened the world around him, made him crazy. He wanted her, wanted to fill her, possess her, make her his own. Take her. Take her.

His blood thudded heavily in his veins as he kissed up alongside her jaw to her ear, then took her mouth again. She moaned, bit his chin, his jaw, then found his mouth again as she curled her calf around the back of his knee and moved her hips in a long, sinuous roll that left him bucking and shuddering against her.

The power of her response filled him, consumed him, had him rearing up and over her, and covering her body with his. Lightning arced as they met openmouthed in a hot clash of lips, tongue, and teeth that flashed heat to need, and from there to an absolute requirement: He had to have her like he had to have his next breath, the next beat of his heart.

And deep in his soul, a soft voice whispered: Mine.

Reese was out of her mind, out of control, and she didn't care. It felt so good to let go. Her better sense was long gone, her body turning to flames as she willingly lost herself. Dez was a furnace, an inferno; heat pumped off him in waves while she kissed him openmouthed and touched him along the lines of his sides, the dips at his hips and flanks. Groaning, he pressed into her, tormenting her with his thick length and the barrier of her clothing, cupping her a.s.s and pressing at the juncture, rubbing through the heavy cloth to make her moan and pant into his mouth.

Unable to stand the torture, she surged up and over, rolling them so he was on his back. He yanked off her s.h.i.+rt, then her bra, and she rolled away to deal with her too-heavy combat pants, boots, socks, all of it, so when she came back to him they were skin on skin, bare to bare, her legs wrapping around one of his, holding them both in place.

He cupped her breast, making the room spin as he kissed her. He surrounded her, took her under, drowning her in layers of sensation as he stroked her body, cupped her naked a.s.s, slipped a finger beneath and groaned at the back of his throat. Sensations blasting through her, she skimmed a shaking hand across the hard bud of a masculine nipple, enjoying the indrawn hiss of his breath, the way his hands went still for a second. Then he shuddered as she caressed his taut belly, made a wide, teasing detour, and then trailed her fingers across the faint wrinkles surrounding his prodigious sac, which was drawn tightly up in excitement and seemed to come alive beneath her touch.

”Yes,” he hissed against her mouth, gripping her hip, her shoulder, then digging his fingers into her hair to drag her mouth up to his for a fierce, wild kiss that tasted of sage and made her head spin. ”G.o.ds, yes.”

He was hugely thick where she wrapped her hand around him, long from base to tip, where he was wide and blunt, and pressed eagerly into her hand. She curved her fingers around him, felt a thrill when she couldn't completely enclose him, another when he groaned and met her stroke with a jerky, desperate thrust.

There was slick wetness on her fingers, on her skin, between her legs where she gripped his thigh, rode it. She was feverish, her heart pounding with the desperation to take him inside her. There was no need for a condom; the magi used sterilization spells and didn't carry disease. And, despite the faint pinch beneath her heart, there was no need to wait, no reason to go slow.

At his urging she parted for him, arched into his touch as he cupped her, his hand gliding across where she, too, was sleekly bare. He pressed his forehead to her, his breath an excited rasp. ”f.u.c.k, that's s.e.xy.”

Then he slid a finger inside her, worked her with his thumb and sent her cartwheeling. Light flared behind her eyelids as a hard, hot o.r.g.a.s.m barreled through her, paralyzing her for a moment with its raging intensity. She bowed up into him and rode out the pleasure that washed through her as he kissed her, held her, worked her, the whole time whispering dark, earthy curses that became love words in his rasping voice.

Every inch of her was sensitized to the fluid slide of skin on skin as she rose over him. She spread her legs wide to straddle him, the move changing the sensations and sending new urgency licking through her. Then she leaned in so they were nose to nose as she reached down to touch him, stroke him, center him at the entrance to her body. He let her have the moment, his hands gently kneading her hips, his eyes steady on hers, warm in the afternoon sunlight, then clouding as she eased him inside. The blunt head of his c.o.c.k stretched and filled her, setting off chain reactions that began at her wet clasp and flared outward. The tightness eased as she moved down his shaft, then returned when he was fully seated within her.

They fit together tightly, with a seamlessness that brought a p.r.i.c.kle of tears, a churn of emotion that she fought back. This was real. It was magic.

She closed her eyes and let her head fall back, then began to move her hips gently, experimentally. Heat flared through her, ramping higher as he slid his hands to her waist, up to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. A long breath shuddered out of her and she rocked against him.

”Fuuuck.” As if unable to stay still any longer, he jackknifed up, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her hard and hot as he slid them, still intimately connected, to the edge of the mattress. He got one leg down, curled the other around behind her, and surged into her, his strong grip counterpointing the thrust. And again.

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